DysrhythmiaThe Veil of Control

On The Veil of Control, the seventh album from NYC based trio Dysrhythmia and their second release for Profound Lore Records, off-kilter transitions strike without warning, giving fans of their prog-rock heavy days plenty to chew on.

Dysrhythmia have a storied history of confounding purists, but Veil of Control is arguably the band's most cohesive release to date. Gone are the math-y, jazz-fusion influences from Barriers and Passages (2006). Instead, the album ricochets between death metal blast beats and doomy washes of ethereal post-rock at a dizzying speed.

Lead track "The Veil of Control" is a meticulous guidebook to managing balance in the face of high winds; fragile, sporadic melodies are the only reprieve from the rest of the track's sheer gale force. It should come as no surprise that Dysrhythmia share members with Krallice; Colin Marston and Kevin Hufnagel were recruited by Luc Lemay when he revived the legendary Montreal technical death metal outfit, Gorguts, and the standard for each track on this album reflects their high degree of mechanical dexterity. "Internal_External," for example, is a six-plus-minute muscle show of the band's effortless rhythmic gymnastics.

However, to evaluate Veil of Control based on the band's technical skill alone obscures the album's intentional emotional flexibility. The varying atmospheres on "Severed and Whole" provide dynamism on the slow-burning ode to finding solace in destruction, while the relatively more structured "Black Memory" mimics the experience of patterned behaviour as a way to relieve paranoia. For a group that have crafted an identity based on compositional complexity, Dysrhythmia ultimately derive their success from leaving space to catch your breath in order to amplify the bedlam.
(Profound Lore)